The Last Family Doctor

Download or read book The Last Family Doctor written by Paul E. Stepansky and published by . This book was released on 2011-01 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Last Family Doctor is the story of William Stepansky, a remakable family doctor who touched thousands of lives. Beginning in 1953, he provided all the scientific medicine had to offer to the small rural communities he served in eastern Pennsylvania. And he did so with an embracing humanity, an ability to contain the pain, suffering, and anxious concern of others that is integral to the all but lost art of medicine.

Download or read book The Last Doctor written by Jean Marmoreo and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-09-27 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER *SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 WRITERS' TRUST BALSILLIE PRIZE FOR PUBLIC POLICY* An urgently important exploration of the human stories behind Canada's evolving acceptance of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), from one of its first and most thoughtful practitioners. Dr. Jean Marmoreo spent her career keeping people alive. But when the Supreme Court of Canada gave the green light to Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in 2016, she became one of a small group of doctors who chose to immediately train themselves in this new field. Over the course of a single year, Marmoreo learns about end-of-life practices in bustling Toronto hospitals, in hospices, and in the facilities of smaller communities. She found that the needed services were often minimal—or non-existent. The Last Doctor recounts Marmoreo's crash course in MAiD and introduces a range of very different and memorable patients, some aged, some suffering from degenerative conditions or with a terminal disease, some surrounded by supportive love, some quite alone, who ask her help to end their suffering with dignity and on their own terms. Dr. Marmoreo also shares her own emotional transformation as she climbs a steep learning curve and learns the intimate truths of the vast range of end-of-life situations. What she experiences with MAiD shakes her to her core, makes her think deeply about pain, loneliness, and joy, and brings her closer to life’s most profound questions. At a time when end-of-life care and its quality are more in the public eye than ever before, The Last Doctor provides an accessibly personal, deeply humane, and authoritative guide through this difficult subject.

Download or read book Searching for the Family Doctor written by Timothy J. Hoff and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With family doctors increasingly overburdened, bureaucratized, and burned out, how can the field change before it's too late? Over the past few decades, as American medical practice has become increasingly specialized, the number of generalists—doctors who care for the whole person—has plummeted. On paper, family medicine sounds noble; in practice, though, the field is so demanding in scope and substance, and the health system so favorable to specialists, that it cannot be fulfilled by most doctors. In Searching for the Family Doctor, Timothy J. Hoff weaves together the early history of the family practice specialty in the United States with the personal narratives of modern-day family doctors. By formalizing this area of practice and instituting specialist-level training requirements, the originators of family practice hoped to increase respect for generalists, improve the pipeline of young medical graduates choosing primary care, and, in so doing, have a major positive impact on the way patients receive care. Drawing on in-depth interviews with fifty-five family doctors, Hoff shows us how these medical professionals have had their calling transformed not only by the indifferent acts of an unsupportive health care system but by the hand of their own medical specialty—a specialty that has chosen to pursue short- over long-term viability, conformity over uniqueness, and protectionism over collaboration. A specialty unable to innovate to keep its membership cohesive and focused on fulfilling the generalist ideal. The family doctor, Hoff explains, was conceived of as a powered-up version of the "country doctor" idea. At a time when doctor-patient relationships are evaporating in the face of highly transactional, fast-food-style medical practice, this ideal seems both nostalgic and revolutionary. However, the realities of highly bureaucratic reimbursement and quality-of-care requirements, educational debt, and ongoing consolidation of the old-fashioned independent doctor's office into corporate health systems have stacked the deck against the altruists and true believers who are drawn to the profession of family practice. As more family doctors wind up working for big health care corporations, their career paths grow more parochial, balkanizing the specialty. Their work roles and professional identities are increasingly niche-oriented. Exploring how to save primary care by giving family doctors a fighting chance to become the generalists we need in our lives, Searching for the Family Doctor is required reading for anyone interested in the troubled state of modern medicine.

Download or read book A Fortunate Man written by John Berger and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1997-03-25 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this quietly revolutionary work of social observation and medical philosophy, Booker Prize-winning writer John Berger and the photographer Jean Mohr train their gaze on an English country doctor and find a universal man--one who has taken it upon himself to recognize his patient's humanity when illness and the fear of death have made them unrecognizable to themselves. In the impoverished rural community in which he works, John Sassall tend the maimed, the dying, and the lonely. He is not only the dispenser of cures but the repository of memories. And as Berger and Mohr follow Sassall about his rounds, they produce a book whose careful detail broadens into a meditation on the value we assign a human life. First published thirty years ago, A Fortunate Man remains moving and deeply relevant--no other book has offered such a close and passionate investigation of the roles doctors play in their society. "In contemporary letters John Berger seems to me peerless; not since Lawrence has there been a writer who offers such attentiveness to the sensual world with responsiveness to the imperatives of conscience." --Susan Sontag

Download or read book In the Hands of Doctors written by Paul E. Stepansky and published by . This book was released on 2017-08-16 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study of the caring dimension of medicine examines the central role of touch and procedure in building doctor-patient trust. It explores the impact of technology, the Internet, and patient rights on doctor-patient relationships, and develops proposals to recruit and train primary care physicians who are both caring and procedurally oriented.

Download or read book Heirs of General Practice written by John McPhee and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heirs of General Practice is a frieze of glimpses of young doctors with patients of every age—about a dozen physicians in all, who belong to the new medical specialty called family practice. They are people who have addressed themselves to a need for a unifying generalism in a world that has become greatly subdivided by specialization, physicians who work with the "unquantifiable idea that a doctor who treats your grandmother, your father, your niece, and your daughter will be more adroit in treating you." These young men and women are seen in their examining rooms in various rural communities in Maine, but Maine is only the example. Their medical objectives, their successes, the professional obstacles they do and do not overcome are representative of any place family practitioners are working. While essential medical background is provided, McPhee's masterful approach to a trend significant to all of us is replete with affecting, and often amusing, stories about both doctors and their charges.

Download or read book Chasing My Cure written by David Fajgenbaum and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LOS ANGELES TIMES AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BESTSELLER • The powerful memoir of a young doctor and former college athlete diagnosed with a rare disease who spearheaded the search for a cure—and became a champion for a new approach to medical research. “A wonderful and moving chronicle of a doctor’s relentless pursuit, this book serves both patients and physicians in demystifying the science that lies behind medicine.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, New York Times bestselling author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene David Fajgenbaum, a former Georgetown quarterback, was nicknamed the Beast in medical school, where he was also known for his unmatched mental stamina. But things changed dramatically when he began suffering from inexplicable fatigue. In a matter of weeks, his organs were failing and he was read his last rites. Doctors were baffled by his condition, which they had yet to even diagnose. Floating in and out of consciousness, Fajgenbaum prayed for a second chance, the equivalent of a dramatic play to second the game into overtime. Miraculously, Fajgenbaum survived—only to endure repeated near-death relapses from what would eventually be identified as a form of Castleman disease, an extremely deadly and rare condition that acts like a cross between cancer and an autoimmune disorder. When he relapsed while on the only drug in development and realized that the medical community was unlikely to make progress in time to save his life, Fajgenbaum turned his desperate hope for a cure into concrete action: Between hospitalizations he studied his own charts and tested his own blood samples, looking for clues that could unlock a new treatment. With the help of family, friends, and mentors, he also reached out to other Castleman disease patients and physicians, and eventually came up with an ambitious plan to crowdsource the most promising research questions and recruit world-class researchers to tackle them. Instead of waiting for the scientific stars to align, he would attempt to align them himself. More than five years later and now married to his college sweetheart, Fajgenbaum has seen his hard work pay off: A treatment he identified has induced a tentative remission and his novel approach to collaborative scientific inquiry has become a blueprint for advancing rare disease research. His incredible story demonstrates the potency of hope, and what can happen when the forces of determination, love, family, faith, and serendipity collide. Praise for Chasing My Cure “A page-turning chronicle of living, nearly dying, and discovering what it really means to be invincible in hope.”—Angela Duckworth, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Grit “[A] remarkable memoir . . . Fajgenbaum writes lucidly and movingly . . . Fajgenbaum’s stirring account of his illness will inspire readers.”—Publishers Weekly